Brit Box: On and Off

You've probably skipped ahead and looked already, Ken, but here are the actual songs that made it onto the Brit Box comp. Looks like you got about half right.

Oasis - Live Forever
The Smiths - How Soon is Now?
The Cure - Just Like Heaven
Suede - Metal Mickey
Pulp - Common People
New Order - Regret

Echo and the Bunnymen - Lips Like Sugar
The Stone Roses - She Bangs The Drums
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Grey Cell Green
Teenage Fanclub - Starsign
The Verve - Lucky Man
Elastica - Stutter

The Boo Radleys - Lazarus
Supergrass - Alright
Swervedriver - Duel
Stereolab - Wow & Flutter
James - Laid
The Charlatans - The Only One I Know

Here is a press release that lists all of the songs in the boxed set.

Some of these are kind of surprising, as some really big hits by these bands were left off. But the most interesting thing about the list are the bands that are not represented at all. Ken brought up XTC as one example, but there are many more.

The press release claims the collection to be "...78 U.K. performers spanning the last 15 years of the 20th century" and containing "U.K. INDIE, SHOEGAZE, AND BRIT-POP GEMS OF THE LAST MILLENNIUM." It's possible certain bands were not included because they were on major labels and not independents. Without doing any research (as easy as it is to research things on the Internet, I'm not going to bother for this post), I find it hard to believe that NONE of the songs on this comp were released on major labels.

Plenty of one-hit wonders and little known acts (to me, anyway) are included, so why then, are bands like XTC, Slowdive, Belle & Sebastian, Simple Minds, The The, Pet Shop Boys, Psychedelic Furs, Depeche Mode and even Radiohead NOT on this comp?